Saturday, June 18, 2011

The country's most important conference of internet-aware progressive activists is underway late this week in Minneapolis. A record contingent of Alaskans are there, with progressive commentator Shannyn Moore and sometimes progressive blogger and far right Christian book publishing company author, Jeanne Devon, returning. This year, they are joined by progressive blogger and Alaska Young Democrats organizer, John Aronno, and by very progressive Alaska blogger, Mel Green - and other Alaskans.

I was once again offered an opportunity to attend, but declined, as I have in the past. My friend, Philip Weiss, who is attending for his first time, partially answers the question of why I don't attend - here.

One of the big issues this year, as we look toward the 2012 presidential campaign, is why should progressives support Obama? For me, it is simple - I'm not deciding who I'm going to vote for until things shape up more clearly, but Obama certainly does not have my automatic endorsement.

Let alone my time and money, which I gave him so much of in 2008.

We were in two wars when he came in. We are now in five - Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and Yemen. We sponsored - with Obama's increasingly obvious endorsement (thanks, Wikileaks and Bradley Manning) - an anti-Democratic coup in Honduras, which benefitted the oligarchs there along with their American corporate partners, and fucked over the common people.

The banksters that brought on the 2008 economic collapse have only been strengthened by the Obama administration turning a blind eye to their past and continuing actions, which threaten the very fabric of our economy and democracy. The war criminals of the Bush era, and the national security state that expanded under Bush have even gotten into far more power since early 2009, with Obama's hearty blessings.

Here's Democracy Now's Amy Goodman, and White House apparatchik Cornell Belcher, laying out the framework of the problem on CNN yesterday: